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The mother he sought, could he so choose, would have the strength to look him in the eye, and to see and not fear who he was. There would be a reserve about her, a kind of selfishness, perhaps, that in itself would give him enough room to grow into his own world, making his own choices about how to live.
Gripp Galas would have laughed at the notion. The child, he would say, needs guidance. The child, he would insist, was not ready to understand the world, not ready to make a place in it. And these things were probably true, but a balance was needed nonetheless. Until his arrival in the Citadel, Orfantal had been smothered beneath his mother’s needs. He had been weighted down with the fears and dreads of his grandmother. Of his father there was only absence, a vast realm of ignorance in which Orfantal could raise heroes standing beneath bold standards, and that suited him well enough.
Heroic death appealed to him like nothing else, when he imagined his future life, when at last he clawed free of his mother and her shrinking world.
He’d sensed his mother’s arrival. His powers had grown, and now the city and its outskirts trembled as if sheathed in his own skin. The black river, with its crisp shelves of ice along the banks, felt like his own heartline, rich with the tireless flow of blood, too swift to freeze solid, too fierce to be turned aside. He felt his mother and her uncertain steps. He shivered to the sudden presence of the First Son of Darkness, whose spirit was like a mailed fist; and the stranger beside him, in the moments before retreating back into the forest – that man held in his heart all the resolve of a wounded world, of nature steeling itself against a storm of its own making.
Orfantal was still a child, and yet in the space given to him, since his arrival at the Citadel, he had soaked in the dubious wisdom of ancient stone walls, of floors laid out in ritual, of magicks swirling down every passage, murmuring the memories of old gods. He had prodded awake sleeping spirits, and each one had given him new words, new thoughts, new ways of seeing. But, for all that, his mind remained as it had always been, quick to absorb all the new things given him, and as quick to find itself wandering lost in confusion, knowing he was not yet able to understand it all. Knowing that such gifts, these blessings of stone and old gods, were meant for someone older, wiser – someone who understood enough to be afraid.
He saw the boy Wreneck, his old friend who’d stopped being his friend, rushing into the keep. It was startling to find that Wreneck could see the wolf ghost he’d left there, near the Terondai, and Orfantal was not yet sure if he was pleased by that, or alarmed.
Wreneck looked much older than Orfantal remembered, scarred and sure-eyed, like a warrior or a hunter. He carried a spear, and no one he passed in the corridors challenged him. Orfantal did not know if he should be frightened as Wreneck followed the ghost ever deeper into the Citadel, and ever closer to where he now hid.
But all these details were shoved to the wayside upon the return of Emral Lanear, the mother he would have chosen for himself. He longed to curl up in her lap again, not just in spirit, but with his own body, its solid limbs and the weight of his head resting on her breast.
Everywhere there was the talk of war, of the battle to come. Everywhere in the Citadel, and in the city beyond, there was a miasma of fear and uncertainty. People were in motion, restless and at times scurrying, as if their labours could reshape the future. And how their hands worked! He watched pots being scrubbed, stacked and dried, and then hung on hooks in neat rows. He watched clothes being folded, floors being swept, cords of wood perfectly stacked. Axe-edges honed, blades polished. Everywhere his mind looked, he saw a frenzy of order taking hold of men and women.
Panic was the enemy, the mundane necessities of living a ritual of control, and as control was torn away – out beyond the walls, out beyond the city itself, those busy hands at the ends of those arms – they all retreated to what was in reach. That and nothing more.
And this is us. This is the Tiste.
And, the ghosts tell me, this is how a civilization falls.
He would curl into her lap, as she sat in her chair, tendrils of smoke rising about them. In a chamber well guarded by his ghostly wolves. Children only ever had one place of retreat.
My real mother is skin over wounds. She hurts everywhere inside, and she wants to bring it to me. She has a new child, a thing of sorcery, a thing of terrible power. I see the Eleint in the baby’s eyes, the father’s ancien
t power.
If Mother keeps her close, that toddling thing, she will poison it. She will make a monster.
Wreneck was coming closer. He would reach this room in only a few moments. Orfantal blinked, withdrawing his vision, his multitude of strange senses that quested everywhere like unseen draughts. He glanced down at Ribs, watched the dog dreaming in a cascade of twitches. Easier to make the beast sleep than to see it ever fleeing.
If he had the words, he would tell Emral Lanear so many things. If he had the words, he would say this: Mother Emral Lanear, I feel your clouded mind, and all the guilt you refuse to think about. I feel your grief at beauty lost, there in the mirror. And I would tell you otherwise, how your beauty is something no mirror could capture.
Mother of Darkness cannot be seen, so you stand in her stead. Her true representative. Even you do not understand that. Just like the goddess, you are the mother of us all. And that space surrounding you, that vast space, it is your gift of freedom. To your children.
But it seems we’ve made it a place for killing.
But no such words came to him, except in the echo of someone else’s voice. There were times – and he heard this in a whisper – when the poet took liberties, to sweep aside the confusion in service of clarity. To make things plain.
Some indulgences must be borne. For others, patience was wearing thin.
The door opened. Wreneck stepped warily into the chamber. ‘Orfantal?’
Orfantal uncurled from Lanear’s chair. ‘She’s back,’ he said. ‘She’s coming here, I think.’
‘What? Who?’
‘The High Priestess. Hello, Wreneck.’
‘I’ve come to warn you.’
‘Yes, my mother. And her new child.’
‘Korlat. She’s named Korlat.’
‘Ah.’
